Pandemic makes girls easy prey for sex pests

A 13-year-old girl who claims she was defiled and impregnated by a neigbour in Nakuru West Sub-County. [Kipsang Joseph, Standard]

It is now four months since the government ordered all schools closed to tame the spread of Covid-19 and Carol (not her real name), from Kaptembwo, Nakuru Town West, is pregnant.

The Standard Eight pupil at a local primary school in Kaptembwo, Nakuru Town West, is one month pregnant.

She says she is confused.

“I cannot believe I am pregnant. I don’t even know what it means to be pregnant. What will my friends say?” she asks.

Speaking to The Standard, the second-born in a family of three claims she was defiled by a neighbour.

Felt ashamed

According Carol, the 35-year-old neighbour at first lured her with bread. He is married, but his wife was away in the village.

Carol turned down the offer, but he eventually lured her to his house, defiled her and fled.

At first, Carol did not tell her mother that she had been defiled.

“I felt ashamed, “she says.

But mothers rarely fail to notice these things, and Carol’s mother immediately saw the changes in her daughter; she was vomiting and was constantly fatigued.

Mothers know these things. But when you are a mother to a 13-year-old, to think that she might be pregnant seems like a wild stretch of the imagination.

“When she started vomiting, I thought she had malaria,” says Carol’s mother.

She took her daughter to Nairobi Women’s Hospital where tests revealed that the 13-year-old girl was pregnant.

She was stunned and demanded answers.

Then Carol spilled the beans. She told her mother about the bread bait, and how a neigbour lured her to his house and defiled her.

The matter was reported at Kaptembwo Police Station, Occurrence Book (OB) number 15/4/7/2020.

Carol is preparing to be a mother; a case of a child raising a child. Her mother on the other hand is likely to play the role of grandmother and mother to the unborn baby. 

“It hurts, but what else can a mother do? I am not letting this be the end of my daughter’s future,” she says. 

In the same estate as Carol, Evah, 14, is also pregnant.

She says she was defiled by a neighbour who had been stalking her through her mother’s phone.

According to the investigation file, Eva’s mother discovered that the neighbour had been stalking her daughter on June 25.

“The girl was using her mother’s phone to chat with the neighbour, the communication led to the defilement,” states the investigating officer.

Not far from Eva and Carol’s estate, Mercy, 13, is also pregnant.

The Standard Six pupil claims that she was defiled by her 30-year-old neighbour who is on the run.

“He said he had something he wanted me to pick from his house and take it my parents. When I went he defiled me and warned me against telling anyone about it,” says the girl.

Carol, Eva and Mercy join the cold, faceless statistics of rising teen pregnancies and defilement cases fuelled by the ongoing Covid-19 lock-down.

According to Nakuru County children’s coordinator, Alice Wanyonyi, 513 girls aged between 13 and 17 were defiled in Rongai sub-county alone, between January and May.

At least 25 girls are pregnant in Kuresoi sub-county.